Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : PHP, Web

Zend Launches Open Source Initiative to Drive Cloud Application Development

Peter Galli — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Today, Zend Technologies announced the Simple API for Cloud Application Services project, which is a new open source initiative that allows developers to use common application services in the cloud, while enabling them to unlock value-added features available from individual providers.

This new project is designed to encourage widespread participation and contributions from the open source community, resulting in the availability of Simple Cloud API adapters for virtually all major cloud providers.

Zend, Microsoft, IBM, Nirvanix, Rackspace and GoGrid are all co-founding contributors to this community project, which aims to facilitate the development of cloud applications that can access services on all major cloud platforms and whose initial goal is to provide a set of programming interfaces for PHP developers to facilitate the development of applications that have basic cloud storage needs.

The first deliverables will include interfaces for file storage, document database, and simple queue services from platforms like Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure, Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network and Rackspace Cloud Files, allowing developers to deploy software applications to access services in these environments without making time consuming and expensive changes to their source code.

As Andi Gutmans, the CEO at Zend Technologies, notes in the press release announcing the project, "cloud computing offers irresistible value to enterprises of all sizes, but the lack of portability across cloud application services for even the most basic operations has been an impediment to broader adoption of cloud services."

An initial Simple Cloud API proposal and reference implementation is already available now for community review and participation, while a technology preview of the PHP client libraries for Windows Azure can be found here.

Microsoft is also contributing Simple Cloud API adapters, along with the official PHP client libraries for Windows Azure storage, to future versions of Zend Framework. These adapters will allow applications to take advantage of many Windows Azure features through the Simple Cloud API interface, while Microsoft's client libraries will put Windows Azure innovations, such as transaction and partial upload support, at the fingertips of cloud application developers.

"The Simple Cloud API is an example of Microsoft's continued investment in the openness and interoperability of its platform. We're excited to see how this project will foster adoption of cloud computing platforms by PHP developers and hope that many of these developers are encouraged to use Windows Azure," Doug Hauger, the General Manager for Windows Azure, notes in the press release.

Microsoft's involvement started a few months ago, through our work with Real Dolmen on a Windows Azure SDK for PHP developers. This SDK has been submitted to the Zend Framework, and it now forms the basis of Microsoft's contribution to the Simple Cloud API project.

As Vijay Rajagopalan, a Principal Architect at Microsoft, notes in his blog, the Zend Adapter for Windows Azure will leverage Microsoft's contribution. PHP developers will now be able to program against Windows Azure - in a way that is consistent with other cloud platforms - by tapping into the main features of Window Azure Storage.

Those PHP developers who need to use specific Windows Azure features not included in the scope of the Simple Cloup API (like transaction), will be able to combine the Zend Cloud Adapter with the dedicated Windows Azure SDK for PHP.

"This will allow developers to use common application services in the cloud, while enabling them to unlock value-added features available from individual providers. Simple API for Cloud also gives PHP developers more choices, and this is a great opportunity for them to think about using Windows Azure," he says.

The Hidden Technology Decision-Maker

Mark Stone — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

On Monday Microsoft and SD Forum held the 3rd annual Open Source ISV Forum. In a day of interesting talks, I was particularly struck by Larry Augustin's talk. As an emphasizing example of the growth of open source projects partnered with a commercial endeavor, Larry mentioned DotNetNuke.

DotNetNuke is, of course, freely available for download and licensed under an open source license. But there is also a professional edition and a range of complimentary commercial services for those who want service, support, or customizations. The business model is classic open source: the free download seeds the market with potential customers, and as some of those run up against the limits of what they are willing to do on their own, they make inquiries about the professional edition. Thus open source creates an inbound channel of qualified sales leads, without the overhead and expense of a sales force working in the field.

This is a great business model, but it's important to think about the actual decision-makers in this adoption process. What's distinctive about DotNetNuke is that it's one of the few mature, open source Content Management Systems (CMSs) that is not written in PHP. It is, as the name implies, ASP.NET based. And this reminds me of a prdocut management position I was in some years ago when (a) the only mature CMS choices were PHP-based, and (b) PHP on Windows was not yet a viable alternative.

The company in question was in a typical position: they were not a technology company, but needed a strong web presence for their business and to connect to the online community of their customers. They had a home-grown CMS solution that wasn't scaling, wasn't secure, and wasn't stable. My product management team put together a good comparison chart of various CMS choices, many of them open source. I sat down with the web development manager to review the choices.

"Some of these are good systems," he said, "but I have a team of .NET developers, and these are all PHP-based. I don't have head count to go out and hire a PHP dev for this project."

Note the decision-making process at work here:

From an agreed list of candidate software, an engineering team will download something to "test drive";
One developer will do some testing and make a recommendation;
From a short list of recommended software a more thorough test will be done with a prototype or pilot project;
Finally a choice will be made, and money will be spent.

The person with the first vote in the process is not a CIO or any other traditional "IT Decision Maker". It's one dev, talking to his manager. If your software gets vetoed at that level, or -- worse -- never even gets a try-out, then your product isn't in the decision-making process.

A lot has changed in recent years. PHP is now much better supported on Windows, and .NET projects like DotNetNuke are available and much more mature. This is as it should be. For open source to spread to its full potential, it has to be available in the technology adoption decision-making process. And that availability starts with being available to the hidden technology decision-maker: that lone developer who will look at software written in a framework they understand for a platform they work with.

Better Tools for Web Development

Mark Stone — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:10:00 GMT

Several years ago I was helping a musician friend of mine set up a web site to use as a promotional site for his live performances. I opted for a simple, PHP-based Content Management System (CMS) that wouldn’t require any special knowledge for him to post new information, and would be – famous last words – easy for me to set up and maintain.

Not having done professional web development for some time, I quickly found myself on the phone to one of my PHP guru friends. After editing three configuration files (two for the web server, one for PHP itself), and adjusting to make sure we had the right version of PHP running with the right version of MySQL, we finally got everything working, and the CMS properly installed and configured.

This small example has several instructive lessons:

Getting software components working together properly is hard. The open source community takes real pride in tackling this challenge, having delivered tools like make, dpkg, and apt. Even so, simple cases can fail and mire you in complexity.
None of this is where web developers want to spend their time. The creative, innovative work is all done once you have the right components in place.
Absent perfect tools (which we’ll probably never have), you want to have the collective knowledge of your developer community working for you. Without my friend on the phone, I’d have had a much bigger problem on my hands.

So there’s something very liberating about seeing Microsoft offer better tools and facilitate better community collaboration so that web developers can spend more time on creative work and less on component complexity.

I’m referring specifically to the Microsoft Web Platform: Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta (WebPI) and Windows Web Application Gallery, announced today at MIX ’09.

WebPI provides a single online destination and a single process for downloading and installing Microsoft’s freely available web products. By itself this may seem like no more than much-needed common sense, a good effort by Microsoft to help web developers get all the components they need working together more easily and more effectively.

What makes this development really interesting is the Web Application Gallery, an opportunity for web developers to participate and collaborate in a knowledge marketplace of shared components. In other words any web developer who follows certain basic guidelines can add their product to the Gallery, and be part of this ecosystem/community of shared web development activity. This is an opportunity not just to market your work, but share ideas and innovations with other web developers, and indeed let them build on your work.

Does that sound reminiscent of an open source community? It should. While there is no requirement that Gallery code be open source, the spirit behind this effort is very much one of collaboration. The Gallery is based on the idea that web developers collectively can advance their work more than each can individually.

Nor is this a playground strictly for Microsoft technologies. There are two supported web development frameworks in the Gallery: .NET and PHP. Opening up the world of PHP applications for Windows is an exciting prospect. There is at least the possibility that something like Word Press on Windows Server will be a point and click install. We aren’t there yet. WebPI installs SQL Server by default, and MySQL is still a manual install. Many web developers won’t – or shouldn’t – care about the difference, but to some it will matter.

But this is definitely a step along the right path, one step closer to making PHP an operating system-agnostic language. Because a PHP developer should care only about building great apps.

Pilot

jcannon — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:49:00 GMT

I spend a significant amount of my time crisscrossing Microsoft, looking for (and advocating) interesting ways that our research and development teams are adopting open approaches in their work. It’s not terribly difficult - and, in fact, increasingly easy to find areas where sharing code, participating in community and collaborating with the commercial open source industry are part of what we do every day. As part of my role as an open source community & platforms lead, growing this list is core to my job. And in blogging more actively on Port 25, I'm excited about discussing and expanding this list out in the open.

That said, once in awhile something different comes along...and in my crisscrossing this weekend, something different popped for me. As a former web developer, I have a special place in my heart for the developer tools we offer to build web experiences. I can recall using FrontPage '97 to develop simple WYSIWYG websites (*WYSIWYG, admittedly, was on a journey then...still is) and patching together Imagemaps with hand-calc'd coordinates; the joy of Photoshop and installing Kai's Power Tools for the visual fun of it, or the pain of Paint Shop Pro and transparent GIFs circa 1996. Dreamweaver was doing some interesting things and Visual Studio was starting to get more and more web-centric. Ahhh, the days of Web 1.0.

Additionally, as a former IS major, I also have a special place in my heart for development on a budget. Those dispositions keep me acutely aware of what goes on with our Express products - and it caught my eye when I started skimming across the refreshed Express site.

A lot of folks aren't aware that Microsoft offers a free-as-in-beer line of development tools for application, game & web development. We call these 'Express' - and there are four editions: Visual Web Developer 2008, Visual C++ 2008 Express, Visual Basic 2008 Express and Visual C# 2008 Express. There is even a free version of SQL Server 2005 in Express which provides complimentary database services during development. They've been available for a few years, but they were recently rev'd with enhancements from Visual Studio 2008.
With my job at Microsoft focused on open source so acutely, I figured I would take them for a test drive & see how easy it would be to get started. The real test, though? How easy would it be to start using this app if I was a Ruby, or PHP developer (Truth be told - I am not, nor was I during my development days) – but these are different times and those are popular choices. It’s a quick litmus test I’m thinking of using more often…because I do get asked frequently about Microsoft’s support of programming languages and frameworks beyond .NET.

Setup is straightforward - download, run the wizard & choose additional (free) documentation and development options like SQL Express. Click Next & you're set on your way. Note: you do need Windows XP or later to run an Express tool.

After VS Express is installed, the welcome center offers multiple ways to get started via community sample code, beginning programming resources, guided videos and relevant articles from a variety of online communities.

So I tried a quick test. In two-clicks, I went to "Help" and "Search" - and typed in 'PHP'. Here are the automatic & dynamically returned search results:

I immediately get source code samples to begin programming (from MSDN); SQL Server samples for data access and more from the Codezone Community and direct links into community forum posts. Right away, these are pretty useful tools to get started with.

Ruby is a very popular language - so let's try this one more time with 'Ruby':

Again, that’s not bad for a quick and dirty search. I get relevant programming articles, opinion pieces, sample code and more. It’s all hyperlinked out into the web, so I can easily jump-off and explore at my own discretion, or as I’m inclined to do…lose myself in a trail of links, only to recall my original point hours later. (Case in point )

The point I walked away with, in all seriousness, is that the spirit of Port25 is spreading at Microsoft & the proof is in the programming. It's exciting to see these offerings baked in from day one & I encourage you to take one of the Express offerings for a spin & post your feedback - what are your impressions?

On Port 25, I'll continue to highlight examples like this, and expand on my role at Microsoft and how we're working on growing the role of open source within Microsoft's DNA. For now, though, I have to dust off my copy of Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability and wax nostalgic with some old friends.

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Hank Janssen & John Bocharov: Introduction to SQL Server Driver for PHP (SQLPHP)

jcannon — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:14:00 GMT

Our own Hank Janssen gives the Channel9 team an update on the work that has been done to provide a native driver to SQL Server for PHP.

"SQL Team Says:
"The SQL Server Driver for PHP (October 2007) Community Technology Preview (CTP) is designed to enable reliable, scalable integration with SQL Server for PHP applications deployed on the Windows platform. The Driver for PHP is a PHP 5 extension that allows the reading and writing of SQL Server data from within PHP scripts. It provides a procedural interface for accessing data in all Editions of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 (including Express Edition), and makes use of PHP features, including PHP streams to read and write large objects."

Wow. This is cool. Need to find out more about this. What exactly is this thing? Why did we create it? What are the platform requirments? Is it open source? Who are the folks behind this? You know the C9 drill. Tune in and meet SQLPHP Program Manager John Bocharov and Microsoft Open Source champion Hank Janssen who answer a bunch of questions and provide good context about the thinking behind SQLPHP, history and future. Check it out.

PHP on IIS

jcannon — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:01:00 GMT

Just about one year ago, Bill Hilf announced Zend and Microsoft's partnership to enhance PHP performance on Windows Server's IIS web server. This technical collaboration has focused on enhancing the reliability and performance of PHP on Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. As part of this collaboration, the IIS product group has been working on a new component for IIS6 and IIS7 called FastCGI Extension which will enable IIS to much more effectively host PHP applications.

Today, we're excited to announce the release of the Go Live version of Microsoft FastCGI Extension for IIS 5.1/6.0 (FastCGI Extension) as a free download. There's a ton more information on various community sites, so let's get right to it:

Download the FastCGI Extension (You'll need a running install of Windows Server. If you don't already, you can grab Windows Server 2003 R2 here.)
Detailed release information on IIS.NET and configuration documentation.
Join the PHP community discussion on IIS.NET

Would like to hear feedback from our community on this release and will ensure it is routed back to the OSSL and the IIS product team.

- Jamie

FastCGI and Zend Core 2.0

MichaelF — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:45:00 GMT

Following-up on the announcement of the Microsoft/Zend technical collaboration from October, we wanted to make sure the Port 25 community was aware of the first set of deliverables.

The technical preview of Microsoft FastCGI for IIS 6 and IIS 7 can be found here: http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=1000051

Zend Core 2.0, which includes the Windows version of the Zend Enabler technology can be found here: http://www.zend.com/products/zend_core

Combined, these solutions provide a 200-300% performance improvement for PHP on Windows offering comparable performance to PHP on Linux.

If you try this out, we'd be interested in hearing about your experience.

-michael

Andi Gutmans on working with Microsoft & Improving PHP Performance on Windows

MichaelF — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:31:00 GMT

Today at Zendcon Bill Hilf and Andi Gutmans announced a new technical collaboration aimed at improving the performance of PHP on Windows both for IIS 6 as well as in the future including IIS 7 on Longhorn. The partnership has multiple components including Microsoft releasing a FastCGI add-on for IIS and Zend will establish a Windows testing lab to ensure high performance on an ongoing basis. In the end the winners are the millions of PHP developers and hosters who want an viable choice in operating systems.

In this interview Sam and Andi discuss how Zend came to be as well as the details of the announcement. Andi provides his perspective on what this collaboration will mean to the PHP community and has a question of his own for Sam.

Video: Andi Gutmans on working with Microsoft

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